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<P class="title"><A NAME="HELPArcSolid"></A>Solid archives<hr></P>


<P>Solid archive is an archive packed with a special compression method,
which treats several or all files within the archive as one continuous
data stream. WinRAR supports solid mode only in RAR archiving format,
ZIP archives are always non-solid. 
Use <a href="HELPGetArcGeneral.htm#CreateSolid">Create solid archive</a>
option in archiving dialog or <A HREF="HELPSwS.htm">-s</A> command line
switch to enable solid archiving.</P>


<P>Solid archiving significantly increases compression when adding
a large number of small, similar files. But it also has a few important
disadvantages:

<UL>
	<LI>slower updating of existing solid archives;</LI>
	<LI>to extract a single file from a solid archive all preceding files
must be analyzed. This makes extraction from the middle of a solid
archive slower than extraction from a normal archive, but, if all files
are to be extracted from a solid archive, the extraction speed will
not be affected.</LI>
	<LI>if any file in a solid archive is damaged, it will be impossible
to extract all files which follow the damaged area. Thus if a solid archive
is stored to a potentially unreliable media, it is recommended to make use
of the <A HREF="HELPCmdRR.htm">recovery record</A>.</LI>
</UL>

<P>Solid archiving is preferable if:

<UL>
	<LI>the archive is updated rarely;</LI>
	<LI>it is not necessary to frequently extract a single file or only
part of the files from the archive;</LI>
	<LI>compression ratio is more important than compression speed.</LI>

</UL>

<P>Usually files in a solid archive are sorted by extension. But it is
possible to disable sorting with <A HREF="HELPSwDS.htm">-ds switch</A>
or set an alternative file order using a special file, 
<A HREF="HELPRARFILESLST.htm"><I>rarfiles.lst</I></A>.</P>

<P><A HREF="HELPArcVolumes.htm">Volumes</A> and <A HREF="HELPArcSFX.htm">
self-extracting archives (SFX)</A> may also be solid.</P>

<P><B>See also:   <A HREF="HELPSwS.htm">switch -s</A>, <A HREF="HELPSwDS.htm">
switch -ds</A>, <A HREF="HELPRARFILESLST.htm">rarfiles.lst</A></B></P>


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